On Fri, 2002-09-20 at 10:24, Chris Frederick wrote: > I'm looking for some removable storage, primarily for distro-isos. I > don't want to store them on the laptop, but I do want to keep them on > some removable device that I can plug into the laptop and transfer the > needed isos. Nows the hard part. I have a couple options that look > promising. > > 1. USB 2.0 hard drive [snip] > 2. I ran into a neat little toy at CompUSA that uses a Firewire > connection and allows you to basically have an external IDE bay. [snip] Sounds like you already have a FireWire port on your laptop. I think going with a 1394 drive is the way to go in that case. Look at http://www.linux1934.org/ They have a compatibility list.. I think most normal mass-storage devices (things that look and act mostly like hard drives) should be fine. Note that the bigger FireWire devices need an external power supply, while some of the smaller ones can just go on the power going over the 1394 cable. Sidenote: I saw a blurb on TechTV saying that while USB 2.0 theoretically has better bandwidth (480 vs 400Mbps), FireWire is still better in practice (almost twice as fast, from what I can recall). That might just be because FireWire has been around longer, though I'm curious if anyone in the group has had a chance to make a comparison. > Just wondering if anyone here has any advice for some removable storage > on a laptop, or just want to share some success/horror stories. Well, my Dell laptop has a media bay that can accept a CD/DVD drive, an IDE floppy of some kind, or a hard drive. I guess the hard drives I've seen aren't really made to be hot-pluggable (I'm not sure if they can be told to spin down), but I've had it work. The only problem I've seen is that the drive doesn't like to run in UDMA mode until I reboot with a drive in the bay.. (which sucks if I decide I want to slide in my DVD drive and watch a movie, since it makes playback really choppy). -- _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ #define ENOHORSE /* Mount / \/ \(_)| ' // ._\ / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__ failed */ \_||_/|_||_|_\\___/ \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __) [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20020920/16f69c85/attachment.pgp